


What lies underneath

by I_Lovetherain (ilovetherain)



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Lipton/Speris, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-26
Updated: 2010-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-08 08:02:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilovetherain/pseuds/I_Lovetherain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even the strongest have a breaking point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What lies underneath

**Author's Note:**

> Wonderful and professional beta job has been provided by Kahtyasofia and Blinksgirl555  
> Disclaimer: the characters in this fic are solely inspired by those portrayed in the HBO TV series Band of Brothers  
> Warnings: reverse of fanon; there are clear reference to Episode 9 "What we fight for" and the description of Speirs' nightmares might be slightly disturbing. There's angst and there's comfort (without hurt).

After Foy, they all start thinking that, somehow, they had survived hell.

In the relative safety of Haguenau, after Winters calls them back from almost repeating the useless and dangerous patrol that had already cost Jackson's life, they start to believe they've made it through; that the worst part is over.

They couldn't be any more wrong.

The camp in Landberg mercilessly reveals the pretence behind all the justifications for a war of liberation fought between equal armies. The true folly of Hitler's sick dream of Aryans hegemony reveals its dreadfulness by the sight of hundreds of prisoners starved to death, tortured, humiliated for no other reason than they are Jews.

Captain Ronald Speirs is a soldier and a practical man. His main concern is to hold his men together, to keep them busy and focused, to give them a purpose and to avoid the horror of the camp to skin too deeply into their already battered souls. And in this, with Winters' promotion and Nixon and Compton practically lost to battles with their personal demons, Speirs knows there's just one man he can rely on completely: Lieutenant Carwood Lipton.

The men fear and respect Speirs as much as they love and respect Lipton. And Speirs understands well the reason for such devotion: Carwood Lipton's moral integrity and commitment are as valuable and rare as his humility and quiet confidence.

Also, Lipton is a good and caring officer and Speirs can leave the mothering of the platoon to him.

Speirs isn't sure how the two of them had become close. He's even less sure when he started to actually _care_ for Lipton, breaking one of his more radical beliefs: in a war, your companions are nothing more than dead men walking; expendable, even if valuable, instruments.

Lipton is one of the few persons Speirs trusts with his own life. But it's not just that. It's Lipton's company that Speirs finds himself enjoying more than he wants to, and when Lipton falls sick with pneumonia, Speirs worries, not just about losing a superb officer.

As he watches Doc Roe do his best to treat Lipton's high fever and wracking cough, Speirs feels something alien and insidious nesting in the pit of his stomach. For the first time since he enlisted, he tastes the fear of losing someone he's grown to care for. And this fear scares him the most.

The night they return from the camp at Landsberg, Speirs finds Lipton sitting up in bed, eyes red rimmed and with a distant look, lost in the horror of what they have just seen.   
Instead of talking to him, Speirs grabs his cigarettes and goes to sit outside in the cold, alone. The men's effectiveness is his concern, he thinks, not their feelings

The nightmares begin soon after the third camp they liberate. For the most part, they're the same except for a few small variations: he is alone in a shattered town, and suddenly desperate, gaunt creatures start crawling outside the debris, trying to grab him, begging him for food, for water, for mercy. He wakes with a gasp, his heart pounding in his ears. His eyes dart to Lipton's sleeping form – somehow they always end up sharing the same room. Speirs' doesn't want to wake him, doesn't want Lipton to see him like this. In the end, he crawls out of his bed and heads out in search of something, anything, to keep himself occupied.

Things grow worse each passing day. As much as Speirs tries to ignore them, the nightmares come back, night after night, after night. Each one is a little longer, a little scarier.

He craves the battle so badly that he thinks he might be losing his mind. Though, he struggles not to let it show, focusing on organizing supplies, patrols, and men's duties. Praise from Colonel Sink and Winters accumulates.

But the dreams don't stop. He dreams of crippled skeletons grabbing at him, begging for help but there's nothing he can do and he feels useless and frustrated beyond limits.

The worst dream comes after a particularly hard day spent organizing common pits for the burning of corpses, most of them children.

That night he drinks himself unconscious and when the skeletons arrive, they're not pleading or crying; they're angry. They're angry at him because his combat skills could do nothing to save their lives. It's when they finally get a hold of him and gnaw at his flesh that he screams.

"Sir... Ron."

Speirs opens his eyes and tries to rise but someone keeps him pinned to the bed. His sight is blurry and he can't see who is in front of him. The pounding in his head prevents him understanding what the other person is saying.

Then, that someone presses something wet and cool to his face and his eyes and talks to him with a calm, reassuring tone.

Speirs realizes it's Lipton bent over him with a weary and worried look.

"I thought you were dreaming, sir. I'm sorry I had to wake you up, but I feared you would hurt yourself."

Speirs manags to sit up and only then does realize that his fingernails are stained with blood.

"You were clawing at your face," Lipton says, his voice low and his eyes darting around as if he's responsible for Speirs' behavior. "But it's nothing serious, just a couple of tiny cuts over your cheekbones and your brow. They're not bleeding anymore."

Speirs looks down at his hand and then back up at Lipton. The understanding and the worry he sees in Lipton's eyes unsettles him. He grabs the cloth Lipton had used to wipe his face and uses it to clean his hands before throwing it to the floor. He stands up and heads to the door.

"We're all having them, sir. The nightmares." Lipton says.

Speirs stops with his hand on the doorknob but he doesn't turn around.

"They only prove that we're human." Lipton adds after a moment.

Speirs leaves without a word. What can he say, after all? That he's falling apart? That he's more than prepared to face a war, lead a platoon and shoot his rifle; to run through minefields, to kill and even to die but not to deal with what they had seen in the camps? He can't say any of these things. To anybody. Not even to Lipton. Because he has to stay focused for Easy's sake, for the battalion, for whatever mission they need him to accomplish.

Afterward, he avoids his bed and Lipton's company as much as he can. By his part, Lipton never mentions what had happened. This allows them to carry on with their necessary tasks without personal feelings interfering.

Speirs is good at keeping his emotions locked away in a forgotten corner of his mind. He's so good at it, nobody seems to notice that sleep deprivation is eating at his sanity.

One day, while he's cleaning his rifle, he finds himself staring into the pitch black hole of the barrel. It reminds him of the pitch black holes that used to be the prisoners' eyes.

"You might want to turn the safety on, sir."

Speirs lifts his eyes to Lipton's calm ones. He realizes he hadn't flipped the safety catch on before he started cleaning his gun. He puts the rifle on the table and looks at Lipton. For a moment that seems to stretch on a bit too long, neither of them says a word.

"How d'ya live with this?" Speirs asks in the end. There's no need to explain what "this" is.

Lipton shakes his head. "I don't know, sir," he says in that soothing way of his. "I just try to think that we're all doing our best to save as many lives as we can."

"Yes but-" Speirs stops suddenly because he realizes that neither Lipton nor anybody else can offer him answers.

"May I show you something, sir?"

Speirs considers Lipton's request for a while and then agrees. He doesn't ask what it's about; he just lets his Lieutenant lead him through the ruins of what was once a small town.

They stop in front of a little church. The sound of a fiddle drifts from the inside and escapes through the crumbling walls; it's a yearning, incredibly beautiful melody.

The church is barely lit by a few candles. It takes several minutes for Speirs' eyes to adjust to the darkness, then he sees that the place is crowded with familiar people; he even thinks he can distinguish the tall frame of Major Winters.

They sit in a pew in the rear, near the main entrance. Where there had once been an altar is now just a pile of debris, and, sitting over them, the fiddler. The man is ghostly thin and his head is completely shaved; he wears a military jacket three sizes too big over striped pajamas. His livid skin stands out unnaturally in the darkness; the eyes completely swallowed by dark, hollow sockets. Like the ghosts that visit Speirs in his dreams. And yet, the man is smiling; he seems at peace, as if he is somewhere else, maybe in a beautiful place, maybe home playing for his loved ones.

"He used to be a Jewish music professor," Lipton whispers. "He lost his sight in the camp due to some infection; he's lost all his family. But he comes here every night, just to play for us. He said it's the only way he knows to thank us."

Lipton pauses and Speirs finds himself staring at his hands; the full meaning of Lipton's words start clawing at Speirs' inner walls of preservation.

"I try to think about the people we're saving, and not about the ones we can't. That's how I manage to live with this, sir."

Captain Speirs realizes that Lipton is right, that this is the only reasonable way to face that tragedy without losing his sanity. And that, maybe, he doesn't have to defeat the ghosts in his dreams, just accept them.

He lowers his head and buries his face in his hands.

**Lt Carwood Lipton speaks**

_I knew it was going to happen, sooner or later. War was starting to take its toll. Some had surrendered to it immediately, others, the more resilient, had fought hard against it. But, in the end, everybody had to bend and pay. Even Captain Ronald Speirs._

It just proved what I had always known: stripped of his hero status, his reputation as a merciless killer and hardened warrior, underneath the aura of myth that was already surrounding him, Speirs was, overall, one of us.

When I touched his shoulder he didn't flinch, he didn't push me away. He grabbed my other hand and held it between his, taking them both to his lips. I could feel the wetness on his cheek. He didn't look at me; he kept his eyes closed while the longing notes of the fiddle filled the church. I didn't say a word, I was just happy to be there for him in that moment, my feelings for him as complicated for me to understand at the time, as they are now to explain.

When he finally regained his composure and stared at me, it was as if challenging me to say something about his momentary breakdown. I could see the usual hardness back in his eyes, but, I could also see that the thin veil of insanity that had made them unfocused and lost was now completely gone.

We walked slowly back to our quarters, talking about how to organize the following day's tasks. It was dark and the streets were almost empty. When we entered our small bedroom, it was night.  
I locked the door and put the key in my pocket, patting it, as if to make a point.

"No lonely nightly walk, tonight, sir, you need to sleep." I said defiantly. He offered me a half grin.

"Are you trying to babysit me or giving me an order, Lieutenant Lipton?"

I shrugged, "Whatever suits you the best, sir. Here, drink this, it may help." I grabbed a half-finished bottle of booze and handed it to him. Speirs studied me before taking a long gulp from the bottle and then handed it back to me. He moved to his bed and slumped over it, closing his eyes.

I sat on the edge of my mattress before suddenly deciding that it was one of those nights where rank needed to be forgotten. I left my bed and sat on his, and brushed his hair from his forehead.

"Ron..."

He opened his eyes and smiled wearily at me, then touched my scar with the tips of his fingers, a gesture he had done few other times. I smiled at the gesture before I began to unbutton his shirt.

"I don't think I can do much tonight" he said. "Probably, can't do anything at all." He chuckled, as if he found his own statement very funny.

"Then do nothing. I'll take care of everything."

"Lip," Speirs touched my face again. His voice was raw from exhaustion and it sent a weird, pooling heat to my belly.

"Sir?"

"Just... If I have nightmares, don't wake me up."

I nodded my understanding and agreement. Then I leaned over and kissed him.

That night, I fucked Ronald Speirs. There was no tenderness in it, none of the sweet kisses I shared with my wife when we made love. It was hard and rough, yes; it was also desperate and unavoidable. But there was passion in it, a different kind of passion, but no less compelling.

I sucked him hard and fast, stealing glimpse of his handsome face, damp with sweat, and of his hands fisted into the sheets. When he came, he tried to push me away but I didn't let him. I wanted it. I wanted him, and I wanted him to know it. I pinned him to the bed, holding his hips down, sucking on his cock until the waves of his orgasm subsided and he lay still and exhausted. His hair was plastered to his face and his lips were parted slightly.

When I turned him onto his belly, he didn't resist. He knew why I was doing it, and he needed it. Surrendering to me like that meant he trusted me, wholeheartedly.

It didn't last long. The tightness I wasn't used to, his body, moving hard and slick under mine, the way we tried to stifle our moans; that only helped make it more sensual. The old wooden bed creaked with every thrust, and the thought that somebody could hear us, or even enter the room, heightened the excitement.

It didn't last long but it was so intense I saw black for a brief moment. I pressed my mouth onto his shoulder and I heard him murmur something incomprehensible. I conceded myself just few moments to recover and only then I realized that we were gripping each other's hands.

By the time I cleaned myself and put my clothes back on, he was already asleep.

That night, when the nightmare came, I didn't wake him up, just as he'd asked. I sat beside him, watching him struggle until his demons finally let him go and Captain Speirs fell into an exhausted sleep.

Only then did I dare to clean the streaks of wetness from his face. I fervently hoped that the few hours of sleep left were for him dreamless and peaceful.

*FIN*


End file.
